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Interests:I am a born again christian ,and attend a
Non-denominational Church .
Study from the King James bible daily.
My God and Father is Jehovah, Jesus Christ.. His Son, and His Holy Spirit , I serve no other !

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I was reading a book written by Pastor Richard Wurmbrand this morning. It was about his time in Romanian prisons being tortured for the Gospel and then his subsequent release to the West to testify about the wrongs and evils of National Socialism and its partner that followed Godless Anti-Christian Communism. It's not folks like Westboro Baptist who are the problem. It's the encroaching Worldwide National Socialism that will be our downfall. The current folks who are leading our Nation are more intolerant than the Westboro Baptists.

As a matter of principle I wouldn't sign it because I don't think the government has a right to designate anyone a "hate group." It will end up being used as a political tool for someone to one day say "well, these people are Christians and look how they act, all Christians must be like them so all Churches must be hate groups." The government shouldn't have the right to label generally law abiding citizens with any negative tag, so long as they follow the law, no matter how wicked and hateful they act. As despicable as what they do is, the constitution gives them the right to do it as long as they don't physically hurt anyone or proactively threaten or incite violence (I have heard of them spitting on people, which could certainly legally be considered a simple assault of some sort and should be, but aside from that most of what they do seems to be picketing and carrying signs that are incredibly hateful), but otherwise, their rights to speak, congregate, and believe whatever they want should be protected from the government, just like yours or mine, because, guaranteed, there are no shortage of people in the chain of decision makers going up from the bottom rung of those who over see designations such as this who would love nothing more than to have all churches become designated as hate groups and would have no problem with using their example as a base with which to build from.

As a matter of principle I wouldn't sign it because I don't think the government has a right to designate anyone a "hate group." It will end up being used as a political tool for someone to one day say "well, these people are Christians and look how they act, all Christians must be like them so all Churches must be hate groups." The government shouldn't have the right to label generally law abiding citizens with any negative tag, so long as they follow the law, no matter how wicked and hateful they act. As despicable as what they do is, the constitution gives them the right to do it as long as they don't physically hurt anyone or proactively threaten or incite violence (I have heard of them spitting on people, which could certainly legally be considered a simple assault of some sort and should be, but aside from that most of what they do seems to be picketing and carrying signs that are incredibly hateful), but otherwise, their rights to speak, congregate, and believe whatever they want should be protected from the government, just like yours or mine, because, guaranteed, there are no shortage of people in the chain of decision makers going up from the bottom rung of those who over see designations such as this who would love nothing more than to have all churches become designated as hate groups and would have no problem with using their example as a base with which to build from.

Well I suppose you can see evil and conspiracy in anything....even an online petition to categorize the Westboro loons as what they are. The families of our fallen, and others, don't need to be revictimized by these demon possessed people. I intend to sign it.

Well I suppose you can see evil and conspiracy in anything....even an online petition to categorize the Westboro loons as what they are. The families of our fallen, and others, don't need to be revictimized by these demon possessed people. I intend to sign it.

I don't see it as a conspiracy. I see it as an opportunity to persecute the Church that someone will invariably take. This sort of thing is not unthinkable and people have been arrested in canada and great britain for doing nothing more than calling homosexuality sinful in public. The bare fact of the matter is that it's not unconstitutional to assemble and picket, no matter what your beliefs are, and it's not unconstitutional to be a loon if you aren't committing a crime while being one. It's not incredibly difficult or conspiracy minded to think that Christians may be persecuted by a secular government or that if you give an inch they may take a mile. The line isn't even that hard to draw from point A to point B on this.

Westboro baptist is openly anti-homosexual and uses very strong and at times vulgar language which I will not repeat here to impart that upon the public. Any Bible believing Church is going to preach that homosexuality is sinful, because it is. There are no laws that list fallen soldiers or slain school children as a "protected" group. However, in 2009 the democrats attached a rider to a defense appropriation bill that added homosexuals into the groups protected from "hate crimes." So, if westboro Baptist WERE to be designated as a hate group, the only justification that could be used in court to defend that decision would be for their stance and language regarding homosexuality. This is straight from the FBI's website and this is the description of what it takes to be labeled a hate group (actual document - http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/hcguidelinesdc99.pdf):

Hate Group — An organization whose primary purpose is to promote animosity, hostility, and malice against persons belonging to a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or

ethnicity/national origin which differs from that of the members of the organization, e.g., the Ku Klux Klan, American Nazi Party.

(I underlined sexual orientation)

So, for anyone who's looked into westboro Baptist, it should be fairly clear that the only activity that they really partake in against a "protected group" is their speech against homosexuals.

How many Godly, Bible believing pastors, deacons, and congregants are going to say that homosexuality is a sin if asked? Pretty much all of them. I honestly believe that if we let this precedent be set then someone is absolutely going to try this, probably successfully. The bible uses VERY strong language against homosexuality. I think it's quite possible that the path this could lead to could very well make it possible to find yourself on an FBI watch list for repeating God's Word. I don't think this is conspiracy minded or that there's necessarily a conspiracy to do so, but this is one of those things that could, and I believe would, opportunistically arise and be pressed in washington on the behalf of homosexual partisans.

To briefly summarize, once again, I believe the only realistic way that westboro could be labeled a hate group is through using their speech against homosexuals, because no one else they picket or speak against is a protected class. I believe that you and I and probably most of the people on this board see their speech with regards to homosexuals as hateful and not loving and certainly not being a light unto the world. Secular champions of the homosexual cause are not going to see much of a difference at all in their speech and what most of the Bible believing followers of Jesus believe with regards to homosexuality and even if they do they have no reason to say so because it wouldn't justify their ends. Simply thinking homosexuality is a sin is enough to get you labeled as a bigot in every day life in a lot of places in this country, right now. It's not a stretch to think that there are people in power who would use this group of people being added to the list to attempt to take it a lot farther, in my opinion.

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Simply thinking homosexuality is a sin is enough to get you labeled as a bigot in every day life in a lot of places in this country, right now. It's not a stretch to think that there are people in power who would use this group of people being added to the list to attempt to take it a lot farther, in my opinion.

Being designated a 'hate group' in the U.S. is not persecution. Nothing would happen to these people other than being put into a category where they belong. Their protests would still be legal.

As a matter of principle I wouldn't sign it because I don't think the government has a right to designate anyone a "hate group." It will end up being used as a political tool for someone to one day say "well, these people are Christians and look how they act, all Christians must be like them so all Churches must be hate groups." The government shouldn't have the right to label generally law abiding citizens with any negative tag, so long as they follow the law, no matter how wicked and hateful they act. As despicable as what they do is, the constitution gives them the right to do it as long as they don't physically hurt anyone or proactively threaten or incite violence (I have heard of them spitting on people, which could certainly legally be considered a simple assault of some sort and should be, but aside from that most of what they do seems to be picketing and carrying signs that are incredibly hateful), but otherwise, their rights to speak, congregate, and believe whatever they want should be protected from the government, just like yours or mine, because, guaranteed, there are no shortage of people in the chain of decision makers going up from the bottom rung of those who over see designations such as this who would love nothing more than to have all churches become designated as hate groups and would have no problem with using their example as a base with which to build from.

i don't think so. Reasonable people can tell the difference between legitimate Christian churches and Westboro. Protected free speech in the Constitution is narrowly defined. Free speech is not the right to say anything you want so long as you don't physically harm someone. The founding fathers would NEVER have included what Westboro does or what the KKK says as falling under protected speech.

The founding fathers wanted free speech to protect us from the government when we speak out against the government and to give us the freedom to protest government policies without fear of government reprisal. If I walk up to a woman and speak to her in sexually suggestive language, that is not protected speech as I can be prosecuted for sexual harrassment, even though I did not incite violence or do her any harm. I cannot publically slander a person on TV or the radio or in newspapers and think that I can fall back on protected free speech.

In short, the Westboro bunch should not be given constitutional protection for what they do.